Psychiatric morbidity among elderly in Chandigarh

To find out the prevalence of Psychiatric Morbidity Among Elderly in the age-group of 65 years and above.

This community based study was conducted by house to house visit after selecting a sample by stratified random technique from the 47 sectors in urban areas and 27 villages in Chandigarh. A total of 250 households in urban and 50 households in rural areas were covered which consisted of 362 elderly (313 urban and 49 rural) who were enrolled and psychiatric morbidity was assessed by using R Kellner & B F Shaffield (1979) scale.

All study subjects had at least one symptom related to psychiatric morbidity. Over two-third elderly were having somatic (72.1%) and depression (68.2%) related symptoms of anger - hostility, cognition and anxiety. Paranoid and psychotic symptoms were noticed among 6.9% and 6.6% of elderly, respectively. Anxiety, depression, somatic, cognitive symptoms were more prevalent in females while anger hostility was more common in males. Some of the common symptom from each of the 7 groups were : Anxiety : Nervousness (37.3%), Depression : Feeling tired lack of energy (57.2%), Somatic : Irritable (48.3%), Anger Hostility: Angry (55.8%), Cognitive : Poor memory (45.6%), Paranoid : Feeling that people do not like you (7.5%) and Psychotic : Strange experiences which other people do not have (4.4%).

Prevalence of high morbidity related to psychiatric symptoms among elderly in Chandigarh, India highlights the significance and need to develop comprehensive mental health care program for elderly.